That lottery story reminds when one in 6 Mountain Dew 20oz bottles would win a free one back in 1996. The caps were yellow, and if you simply tilted the bottle and held it up to the light, you could read enough of the cap to tell if it was a winner. We could only do so many in a short time at the nearby convenience store without being obnoxious, it was fun to walk out and see how many of us were “astonished” to be winners.

It's cumbersome but only the first time, but it's better than searching a word doc for all the numbers to change and accidentally missing one.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Woodrow

Can someone help me with the "right" way to do this using excel and word? I've just been assigned a report that uses numbers from a spreadsheet and I want something slicker than typing them in.

Is the answer Mail Merge? That seems intended to make many letters, but I guess you could use it to make just one at a time.

I've never used mail merge before... I think what cooljabe is doing is entirely legitimate. If your model is in Excel, then you should feel comfortable using Excel to compose the text. It will be easier to understand and audit then shoving it into another program. Also lends itself to conditionals.

If you want to spice it up a bit, you can use VBA to compose outlook emails from Excel as well, and then attach that to a button or something. Just make sure you have adequate error checking first!

__________________
Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.

I created a magic eight ball - as a joke for a coworker, I swear. There was a button in the middle of a blacked out "circle" of cells that when pushed would shake the ball by deleting and adding rows above and to the side a few hundred times, and using wait or pause or something like that to slow it down. Then after a few dozen shakes it rolled through a few of the standard 8 ball responses and a few non-standard.

Balanced Transportation Analyzer
The Balanced Transportation Analyzer, or BTA, is an intricate spreadsheet model that ties together every facet of passenger transport in New York City including transit, auto and taxi. The model makes it possible to measure the effects of changes in auto tolls, transit fares and other policy levels on traffic levels, travel speeds, time spent traveling, agency revenues, emissions and other "externalities." It contains “pre-packaged” traffic-pricing scenarios which you may modify to test your own what-if scenarios. The BTA thereby offers a transparent and straightforward tool for transport policy-makers and advocates to test the impacts of tolls and other policy traffic pricing proposals.

as per someone on the eusprig mail list:

Quote:

I just came across the following monster spreadsheet application for modelling all forms of transport in Manhattan… the best part is you can download the spreadsheet and play with it! I wonder if there are any mistakes in the 72 sheets that make it up?

Yes, it's likely to have lots of errors. Yes, it could be better designed (IMO). But you gotta ask yourself: what's the alternative?

A bunch of inaccessible C++ scripting, with just as many hardcoded values, split into 10 files which are understood by 10 different programmers, which aren't shared with the public, and which can only be run by analysts.

Having everything in one file that anyone in the world can follow is the ultimate goal.

__________________
Sredni Vashtar went forth,
His thoughts were red thoughts and his teeth were white.
His enemies called for peace, but he brought them death.
Sredni Vashtar the Beautiful.